


the scorched knight

by SearchingforSerendipity



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Character Study, Gen, names are important ok, the weasleys - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-24
Updated: 2016-07-24
Packaged: 2018-07-26 12:53:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7574743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SearchingforSerendipity/pseuds/SearchingforSerendipity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Names are anchors. They are heavy, necessary pieces of self, worn at every moment. Like pimples, or birthmarks, or scars. Very much like scars."</p><p> <br/>Percy Weasley, on names, titles and the weight of lineage.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the scorched knight

 

  
**I-**  He was named for both his great grandfathers. Percival Prewett and Ignatius Weasley. Percival was the name of a knight from one of the few takes that paralleled worlds. Percy never felt like much of a knight. His brothers made fun of his long name, and anyway he had been called Percy since before he could remember.

 

 **II-**  Nobody had asked if he liked the name. Of course not. You don't ask a baby or a fetus if he likes the junction of vowels and consonants he can't even interpret.

But after, as he grew up and read books on etymology, taught himself latin because it was what his pureblood colleagues had learned at home, still nobody had cared to wonder if he agreed with what he was called, the phonetics that divided him from the rest of the world. It was the sort of thing Percy noticed and cared for that most people didn't, but he could never forget. Eventually he found out he couldn't make himself not care, either.

 

 **III-** Ignatius means _to catch fire_. Percy was proud of his bluefire spell, proud enough to hold the flames to himself when he was alone and it was dark, his skin tight, the walls too close and sticky. He liked to hold the flames, the afterimage of their light a burning he could see in the underside of his blinks.

  
Sometimes in the busy, cold hogwarts winters he wanted to hold the fire close, let it settle inside his ribs. It would be another extinguishable thing to keep company with his heart.

And sometimes in the warm, slow summer at the Burrow, Percy wanted to chug down the blue flames, let them burn him up and flare up hungrily at the crooked wooden bones of the house. He wanted to burn down the world, but mostly he wanted to burn himself.

 

 **IV-**  Names are anchors. They are the foods they fed you when you were too young to pick up the spoon, the way your nails fit into your fingers. They are heavy, necessary pieces of self, worn at every moment. Like pimples, or birthmarks, or scars. Very much like scars.

 

 **V-** Titles are power. There are door that are opened for you when people know your title, doors closed on your face when they know your last name. Titles erase your past, or gild it bright. They make futures, build their pathway on invisible stones. It is not that people are their titles; it is that with them they are _more_. 

 

 **VI-** Percival The Knight saw the graal. He followed an idea, and went on a quest and failed, but he never ever faltered. Percy would not know what to do with such blind faith. He did not like it, the idea of it. But he knew quests. He knew hunger, knew putting goals on a pedestal and calling it honor, calling it duty.

 

 **VII-**  Arthrur Weasley gave his third son a dog eared version of Once and Future King the day after his tenth birthday. He had forgotten the day before. It was his favorite muggle story, but he forgot to tell his son that as well.

 

 **VIII-** Percy left it behind when he finally cut ties with his family. He used that month's wage and many others before to buy himself a Latin grammar, first hand. It was the finest thing he had ever owned. His neat handwriting dampened the first page greedily, marking it with his signature.

The way the parchment ate the name made it hard to recognize.

 

 


End file.
